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By S-T-H at 08/28/2008 - 18:31
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 As mentioned on the Japanese 360 page and in this thread, server maintenance will be starting an hour earlier tonight. The noted reason is to correct an issue with Howzer in the A difficulty version of Ambition's End 2 (Episode 3 Chapter 5 Act 2). Japan received this update earlier today.
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By S-T-H at 08/21/2008 - 14:31
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Both the Japanese 360 and English update pages have been posted for this week. Here's a look at the new incoming content:
- Seasonal Lobby: Fireworks on Neudaiz (August 22nd through September 26th, also applies to PSUv1 players)
- Story Mission: Episode 3 Chapter 5 (Titled Ambition's End, Accessible from GUARDIANS HQ)
- Free Mission: Flowery Pursuit C-S2 (Accessible from the Saguraki C.D. lobby, leads to Ohtoku City)
- Rare Mission: Phantom Fissure C-S (Has a chance of appearing at random at Neudaiz mission counters)
- New S2 Difficulties: Sakura Blast, Sacred Stream, White Beast, Hill of Spores, Dancing Birds
- Neudaiz GUARDIANS Boost Road (August 22nd through September 26th)
- Features Hill of Spores, Dancing Birds, Flowery Pursuit, Sacred Stream, and White Beast
- This road begins in the Shikon Tanze route, heads into Ohtoku City, and ends up in Ohtoku: Shitenkaku.
- The event Maximum Attack G comes to a close, however reworked missions will be available.
- Free Mission: Maximum Attack G' C-A (Accessible from GUARDIANS HQ)
- Free Mission: Program DF' C-A (Accessible from the transport crystal at the end of MAG')
- Gifts from Beyond will be staying to allow players to turn in their remaining Weapons Badges.
- Hit the Counter! will still be accessible to those players that haven't received their milestone prize.
- More weapons (up to 8 star) and boards (up to 9 star) will be available in the NPC shops.
- A new music disc will be available at Casino Voloyal.
- Lots of new items will be obtainable from the new missions and new difficulty levels for older missions.
Going off prior JP updates, there may also be some modifications to the current NPC material boards in this update. As a reminder, GBR points will now be shared across all characters on the same account (as mentioned in a prior system update). I know that many players have been looking forward to the new S2 ranks as they contain 150+ level enemies. Enjoy the new challenges and drops!
I'll be sure to update this post if any additional changes are discovered after maintenance.
Update: The new music disc is PSU Disc 76.
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By Ryna at 08/21/2008 - 13:18
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 To celebrate the second anniversary of the release of Phantasy Star Universe in Japan, Sonic Team is sponsoring the second annual Thanks Festa event. Scheduled to run from August 21 to September 25th, this Japanese event will include several new missions and GM events. Also, the event webpage has been opened to the public. Unlike most event websites, this one includes a special report section. You can use it to view listings for the most popular classes, races, and Partner Machinery.
Based on the timeline for last year's event, it is expected the regional servers will receive this event sometime in early 2009.
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By S-T-H at 08/21/2008 - 11:43
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 LotusCharts has released the Media Create numbers for the week of August 11th to the 17th. PSP has dropped a mere one spot:
1. [NDS] Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Nintendo) 137,000 / 480,000
2. [PSP] Phantasy Star Portable (SEGA) 74,000 / 564,000
3. [NDS] Dragon Quest V (Square Enix) 74,000 /1,092,000
4. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) 47,000 /2,516,000
5. [WII] Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo) 36,000 /1,692,000
6. [NDS] Fire Emblem: New Shadow Dragons and (Nintendo) 35,000 / 180,000
7. [NDS] Band Brothers DX (Nintendo) 24,000 / 280,000
8. [NDS] Drum Island??? (NamcoBandai) 20,000 / 282,000
9. [PS2] Power Pros 15 (Konami) 19,000 / 161,000
10. [WII] WarioLand Shake (Nintendo) 18,000 / 76,000
Tales of Vesperia for 360 is actually right behind this list at #11. Interestingly enough, it has actually caused Japan to run out of 360s. Getting back to relevance, Phantasy Star Portable is on the verge of becoming the 5th best selling PSP title in Japan. It's heading towards knocking off Hot Shots Golf, which is actually the only first party title in the top 5. It would then be behind three Monster Hunter titles and Crisis Core. There were barely any releases this past week as much of Japan was on holiday.
Here are the third week sales for the top three first week sellers on PSP (care of VGChartz):
Monster Hunter Freedom 2nd G - 221,312
Monster Hunter Freedom 2nd - 96,217
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - 61,831
Comparing these kinds of numbers, it seems that while Phantasy Star Portable didn't have quite as big a launch as these titles, the sales are continuing at a steady pace.
As an aside, Sony has announced a new PSP revision. Pictures of the initial three colors of this model can be found here. It will be released later this year. Those of you planning on picking up a PSP for Phantasy Star Portable may want to hold out until then.
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By S-T-H at 08/19/2008 - 05:32
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As first reported on here, there is a very exciting fanart contest going on right now hosted by Arika. There have been updates since.
More time!
Entrants now have two more weeks (until September 3rd) to turn in their entries.
More prizes!
As provided by Sega, a couple of PSU branded items will be available for the First and Second Place winners. Also, more ingame prizes have been revealed as well. Finally, it appears that the winner can choose to have their art cropped for use in at least one future PSOW avatar.
I hope everyone manages to do their best!
Head here for the full details and to enter.
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By S-T-H at 08/14/2008 - 16:39
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LotusCharts has released the Media Create numbers for the week of August 4th to the 10th. Here we go:
01. [PSP] Phantasy Star Portable (SEGA) 148,000 / 490,000
02. [NDS] Fire Emblem: Shin Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Ken (Nintendo) 145,000 / NEW
03. [NDS] Rhythm Tengoku Gold (Nintendo) 130,000 / 343,000
04. [360] Tales of Vesperia (Namco Bandai) 108,000 / NEW
05. [NDS] Dragon Quest V (Square Enix) 73,000 / 1,019,000
06. [NDS] Sangokushi Taisen Ten (SEGA) 33,000 / NEW
07. [NDS] Summon Night 2 (Namco Bandai) 30,000 / NEW
08. [WII] Wii Fit (Nintendo) 27,000 / 2,470,000
09. [WII] Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo) 23,000 / 1,656,000
10. [PS3] Soul Calibur 4 (Namco Bandai) 23,000 / 97,000
Considering that these numbers are returned from the end of last week, it should be safe to assume that PSP has already cleared half a million copies by now. It's impressive to see PSP in its second week take on and beat two newcomers from other established RPG franchises. I have to give credit to Tales of Vesperia in particular as it probably now has the best first week sales of any 360 title in Japan. The game has been in the news a good deal recently for spiking the 360's not-so-frequent popularity again.
Here are the second week sales numbers (care of VGChartz) for the top three first week sellers (for the Playstation Portable):
Monster Hunter Freedom 2nd G - 581,102
Monster Hunter Freedom 2nd - 150,498
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - 122,144
The first week sales for these games can be seen in my prior post here. It will be interesting to see how much longer PSP can manage to remain in the top ten.
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By Ryna at 08/12/2008 - 01:15
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 In a Gamasutra interview, Sega of America President Simon Jeffery hinted at a Western release for Phantasy Star Portable. Here is a quote from the interview:
Gamasutra: I was amused to see the Phantasy Star Portable news, because it was like a lightbulb went off at Sega. "Maybe we should take our idea back from Monster Hunter!"
Simon Jeffery: Right. (laughter) I think that's exactly what happened at Sega!
Gamasutra: Capcom has had difficulty putting that model forward in the west, but Phantasy Star has done okay. Maybe not as well as it should, but okay.
Simon Jeffery: It's done okay, and there's still quite a lot of people out there playing it every month.
Gamasutra: So do you think you can take that market here with that title?
Simon Jeffery: I think that it's not going to be a blockbuster success, but I think it will be a niche success. I'm certainly hopeful that it's more of a success in the west than Monster Hunter has been. There is a built-in audience for it already there.
I think the crossover of the PSP ownership will work quite nicely, so we're fairly hopeful we can make something out of it. It's not going to be huge, but hopefully it'll be interesting.
While a Western release has not been formally announced yet, these comments should be taken as strong indication that Phantasy Star Portable will be released outside Japan.
Credit goes to Blueblur for spotting this interview. You can discuss this news in our Phantasy Star Portable forum.
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By Ryna at 08/12/2008 - 01:13
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Mainichi, a leading Japanese newspaper, is reporting that Sega of Japan has shipped 500,000 copies of Phantasy Star Portable within the first week. According to the Pocketgamer website, this puts the game in the same league as Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (480,000 copies) and Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G (880,000 copies) for first-week shipments in Japan.
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By S-T-H at 08/07/2008 - 22:07
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Phantasy Star Portable saw incredible first day sales of 217,000 units, a sellthrough rate of over 90% of the game's initial shipment. It currently holds the top sellthrough of an initial shipment of any game this year in Japan. As a result of this amazing success, Sega quickly upped their shipments to a whopping 400,000 units.
Media Create has now released weekly sales data for Japan for Phantasy Star Portable's premiere week, revealing an impressive 342,000 units sold and launching PSP straight to the #1 spot on the chart. Courtesy of Kotaku, here is a sampling of the other top contenders (where you may recognize yet another Dreamcast favorite franchise):
01. Phantasy Star Portable (PSP) - 342,000 / NEW
02. Rhythm Heaven Gold (DS) - 213,000 / NEW
03. Dragon Quest V: Tenkuu No Hanayome (DS) 112,000 / 946,000
04. Soulcalibur IV (PS3) - 75,000 / NEW
05. Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 15 (PS2) - 37,000 / 121,000
06. Soulcalibur IV (360) - 35,000 / NEW
07. Fatal Frame IV (Wii) - 33,000 / NEW
08. Wii Fit (Wii) - 32,000 / 2,442,000
09. Mario Kart Wii (Wii) - 23,000 / 1,633,000
10. Gundam Battle Universe (PSP) - 21,000 / 201,000
Let's also compare first week sales for many of the Phantasy Star titles that have come out in Japan in the past decade (care of VGChartz):
Phantasy Star Online (Dreamcast) - 84,689
Phantasy Star Online V2 (Dreamcast) - 119,159
Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II (Gamecube) - 74,801
Phantasy Star Universe (Playstation 2) - 124,059
Phantasy Star Universe: Ambition of the Illuminus (Playstation 2) - 23,665
It would appear that Phantasy Star Portable has sold over double what Phantasy Star Universe and Ambition of the Illuminus did in their first weeks on the Playstation 2... combined! Now lets compare Famitsu scores (care of the Famitsu Scores Archive, highest being 40 as a total of 4 scores):
Phantasy Star Online (Dreamcast) - 37
Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II (Gamecube) - 35
Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II (Xbox) - 35
Phantasy Star Universe (Playstation 2) - 35
Phantasy Star Portable (Playstation Portable) - 33
From the feedback of many importers, it is clear that this handheld version is an installment worthy of the high levels of interest that it's been garnering. I'm sure it will only become better as balance tweaks and further content updates are already in the works.
With all the developments that I've been seeing as far as this title is concerned, it is clearly only a matter of time before Sega announces an English release of the game. Let's all hope they don't keep us waiting too much longer.
Update: Phantasy Star Portable now has the fourth best launch of a Playstation Portable game in Japan. Here's the other three (numbers care of VGChartz):
Monster Hunter Freedom 2nd G - 857,429
Monster Hunter Freedom 2nd - 741,780
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - 489,085
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By S-T-H at 08/06/2008 - 19:56
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By popular request, I am reporting on an exciting new fan art contest held by PSOW user Arika. Top prize is a small one of these. Interested? Great! Read on.
This event is inspired by prior officially held fan art contests in Japan. This one, however, covers both regions and is held by one of our own cohort. Entrants will be designing a wallpaper based on their character. Full details can be found in this thread.
The event closes on August 20th. Make sure to post your entries in the event thread by then. I'm looking forward to seeing the results!
Update: Arika has decided to extend the contest for two more weeks. Make sure to get your entries in by the 3rd of September!
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